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It's Tuesday, April 3rd.

In an on-going public relations war, Iran has released more videos and letters from 15 captured British soldiers.

They show the soldiers berating their government, calling for a withdrawal from Iraq, praising their captors and demonstrating what Iranian authorities swear are un-coerced, spontaneous expressions of regret for illegally entering Iranian waters.

Currently, Iranian officials say the next video will feature the soldiers dissing tea time, Coronation Street and football on Sundays.

This is The Current.

Falkland Islands – Gott

We started this segment with the sound of a lone trumpet commemorating 649 Argentinean soldiers, sailors, and airmen who lost their lives during the 1982 Falkland war. The ceremony was held yesterday in the Southern city of Ushuaia...the very site, where 25 years ago, Argentina launched its invasion of the British-controlled Falkland Islands or the "Malvinas" as they're known in South America.

That aggression triggered the brief, but bitter 10 week war - with Britain dispatching 28 thousand troops to take back the Islands. But all these years later… the Argentine government still lays claim to the territory just yesterday saying it would use, quote: "more firmness" in reclaiming sovereignty of the Falklands.

To discuss what he considers Argentina's legitimate claim on the Falkland Islands – we were joined by Richard Gott. He's a journalist who writes for Britian's Guardian Newspaper. He's also a research fellow and historian at the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of London.

Falkland Islands – Resident

Today, close to three-thousand people call the Falkland Islands home, many - descendents of the British settlers who arrived in the 1830s. They want to keep their ties to the UK.

Leona Roberts is a seventh generation Falkland Islander and the Manager of the Falkland Islands Museum and National Trust.She joined us by phone from the Falkland's capital, Stanley.

We also heard from Ambassador Eduardo Airaldi who is the Director of the Malvinas Division, for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Argentine Government. He explained the Argentine government's position on the Falkland Islands.

Listen to The Current: Part 1

(Due to various rights issues some segments may be edited for internet use)

The Current: Part 2

Climate Change – Food Security

Smart cars versus SUV's ... solar heating or natural gas... double glazed over single pane windows? These are just some of the questions we weigh when it comes to discussions about how climate change might affect our lives.

But scientists gathered in Brussels this week are expected to raise many other - more challenging climate related quandaries. Issues over whether we'll have enough food or too many neighbours. The researchers are about to release a new report for the "United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change". They'll focus on how global warming will impact our way of life - from global food production -- to the migration of people.

So over the next hour - we too will consider these things... beginning with our food supply. Historically, there are some dramatic examples of how climate shifts can radically affect growing seasons. The last living memory of this for North Americans was of course the Great Depression...conditions, experts warn, which could repeat themselves. Here are some reminders of just how widespread poverty and hardship were when the Canadian Prairies and the U.S. midwest were turned into a dust bowl.

The first voice you'll hear will beDan Goranson ... an 85 year old lifelong farmer and resident of the Weyburn, Saskatchewan area. He was a teenager during the dirty 30's and you'll also hear tape from the CBC Archives of Saskatchewan writer James Gray.

So could Canada experience another great drought or will other effects of climate change prevail? Well, ever since the first alarms about global warming were sounded, there has been the scientific promise of at least one silver, or green, lining with more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, plants would thrive and with rising temperatures, there'd be longer growing seasons in more northern climes.

Indeed, later this week, the UN report is expected to point to Canada as one of the agricultural winners under a new climate regime as the global wheat belt moves northward. But farmers in Saskatchewan are already facing hardship today brought on by drought and unpredictable weather patterns. And some experts see this pattern worsening delivering a hard blow to the breadbasket.

David Schindler is the Killam Memorial Professor of Ecology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and his research suggests that the Canadian Prairies may be returning to a more or less permanent dust bowl.

So, as the challenges to global agriculture mount, an increasing number of experts say food production needs to adapt to the changing climate - and quickly. Many point to the development of drought-resistant crops as one of the most pragmatic solutions, and that's just what David Dennis is working on. He's a former professor of plant biology at Queen's University and he's currently the president of Performance Plants, a Kingston, Ontario-based biotechnology company. He told us about his research.

Well, evidence is beginning to suggest that it's not just the drought that's hitting crops hard … the heat itself is a big part of the problem. A study released last month showed that rising temperatures are already causing losses worth five billion dollars US every year in the world's six major cereal crops that's 40 million fewer tonnes of wheat, rice, corn, soybeans, barley and sorghum per year from 1981 to 2002. The study attributed this decline to human-caused climate change.

David Lobell is a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California and the lead author of that report. Other research indicates that by mid-century, much of the best wheat-producing land in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh will be too hot and dry to grow wheat, and that will put 200 million more people at risk of hunger.

Meanwhile, crop yields are down in parts of Southern and Eastern Europe. And Kenyan herders are watching helplessly as their cattle die of thirst and starvation. And we haven't even mentioned extreme weather events or the effect of climate change on global fish stocks. And all this is happening at a time when some experts believe global food production will have to double over the next 25 years to feed the world's mushrooming population and when an estimated 830 million people in the world are already malnourished.

Lester Brown is one of the world's foremost thinkers on what climate change will mean for the world's food production where that food will be produced and who will be able to eat it. Mr. Brown is the president of the Earth Policy Institute, and his new book is Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble. Lester Brown joined us from his office in Washington, D.C.

Listen to The Current: Part 2

(Due to various rights issues some segments may be edited for internet use)

The Current: Part 3

Climate Change – Human Migration

Earlier we heard Lester Brown - a leading thinker on the impact of climate change - make the link with climate change, food security and the refugee crisis in Darfur. He's certainly not alone. Former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern has also pointed to Darfur as an early example of a humanitarian catastrophe precipitated by climate change, putting masses of people on the move and in conflict with each other. Nicholas Stern, economic adviser to the British government.

So... waters warm in the Indian Ocean, and this disrupts monsoon patterns in Africa. Rains fail, crops fail, then farmers and nomadic herders who used to co-exist peacefully, end up in a bitter contest over dwindling grazing land and a diminishing water supply. The result is an all-too familiar spectacle on the nightly news. We aired a report from a refugee camp in Darfur.

Drought, desertification and famine are examples of how climate change is forcing people to migrate.But there are other factors too - economic dislocation can happen anywhere even in Canada. Take British Columbia for example - towns in the interior dependent on the forestry industry have fallen victim to the relentless march of the pine beetle … a scourge of the boreal forest that used to be killed off during cold snaps but has thrived without the normal temperature plunges. That's put the long-term future of forestry towns like Quesnel, British Columbia in some doubt. We heard from the mayor describing the situation to us.

While it's an unsettling reality for logging towns like Quesnel to have its the population on the move, the plight of low-lying island states like the Maldive Islands, Tuvalu or Vanuatu, is considerably more dire. Right now they sit just above sea level. But those sea levels will continue to rise.

By some estimates - as much as a metre - by the end of the century as polar ice melts and water expands due to heating. Some island nations expect to be totally submerged or rendered uninhabitable by storm surges and coastal erosion by that time, and are already working on repatriating their citizens to higher, more stable ground. New Zealand, for one, has agreed to allow 75 Tuvaluans per year to migrate there.

But low-lying islands aren't the biggest problem when it comes to rising sea levels. A sizable proportion of the world's population lives at the water's edge in some of the world's biggest and fastest-growing cities many of them barely above and in some cases even slightly below sea level. And we've already seen what a combination of extreme weather, massive storm surges and insufficient infrastructure can do.

We aired a BBC report with the sounds of some of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Hundreds of thousands of people fled New Orleans after Katrina's storm surge overwhelmed the levees that were supposed to protect the city. Even now, the city remains largely depopulated.

And a new study says that hundreds of millions more people living in coastal areas could be at risk of being flooded out of their homes, from rising sea levels, higher tides and awesome storm surges before the end of the century. In flood-prone Bangladesh alone there could be tens of millions at risk.

Gordon McGranahan is one of the lead authors of that new study. He's the head of the Human Settlements Group at the International Institute for Environment and Development, and he joined us from our London, England, studio.

Climate Change & Migration – McLeman

Some have suggested that the Katrina disaster and Darfur are only dress rehearsals for the sorts of mass migrations of future so-called environmental refugees. Predictions on the sheer numbers of people who'll be on the move are daunting.

British ecologist Norman Myers estimates there could be as many as 200 million people displaced by environmental factors by the end of the century. A United Nations agency says there could be 50 million such refugees within five years.

To give us more perspective on the projected migration and the stresses it could put on rich and poor countries alike, we were joined now by Robert McLeman. He spent more than a decade in the Canadian diplomatic service and now teaches geography at the University of Ottawa -- specializing in what climate change means for human migration and security. Robert McLeman joined us from our Ottawa studio.

Last Word – Ransom Myers

Before we leave you this morning for the millions of people worldwide who depend on fish as their primary source of protein... climate change is expected to have a serious impact on their diets. This is because of overfishing and changes in water temperatures just the sort of thing that Ransom Myers would have joined us on The Current to talk about today.

Ransom Myers was known as Ram to his friends. He died a week ago of a form of brain cancer. Mr. Myers was a marine biologist at Dalhousie University renowned around the world for his groundbreaking research that brought attention to declining fish stocks and beloved for his great passion for ocean wildlife. Mr. Myers was an integral part of an alarming new report - released last week - warning of the perilous state of shark populations.

Ransom Myers was 54 years old. He leaves behind his wife and their five children and legions of colleagues around the world who mourn the loss of a champion of the ocean.

The Current will remember Ransom Myers as someone generous with his time and gracious with the people who dealt with him. He shared his passion on several occasions here on The Current and we wanted to end the program this morning with some tape of his last appearance last October, when he discussed the Canadian government's refusal to sign on to a movement to ban bottom trawling.

Listen to The Current: Part 3

(Due to various rights issues some segments may be edited for internet use)

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